


All Hallows Eve

by masterwords



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Chains, Halloween, Hero Spencer Reid, Horror, Hurt Aaron Hotchner, Hurt Spencer Reid, Protective Spencer Reid, Scared Spencer Reid, Violence, Whump, corn maze
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:00:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27342382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/masterwords/pseuds/masterwords
Summary: What happens when a haunted house goes wrong?  Spence and Hotch are about to find out.
Comments: 14
Kudos: 75





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Spooky Halloween story to chill the bones! Or not, it's probably just going to be a Hotch whumpy cheese fest paying homage to my favorite movie genre. It won't have too many chapters - I'm already working on another quite involved, multi-chapter story, but this mindworm just wouldn't give me peace until I started writing it down. Hotch whump is good, but even better I think is when Spence has to toughen up and be the big man of the house.

Halloween night was Spencer Reid's favorite night, and yet on this very Halloween, he was having the worst night of his entire life. He was sitting in the mud, in the middle of a giant corn maze, with his boss unconscious in his lap and he couldn't remember how he'd gotten here. They'd been at a festival, the entire team and their families, enjoying the crisp fall day and the children in costumes. He remembered asking for someone to go into the haunted house with him, and after eons of excuses, Hotch had finally bit the bullet and volunteered to go in after Jessica picked up Jack to take him trick or treating and to spend the night at a friend's house. He remembered the musty smell as they entered, and the way something in the house almost made his skin crawl, but he couldn't place what it was. Hotch had commented on the smell as well, and his mind lit on that for a few minutes as they turned corners waiting to be scared. Corner after corner, dizzying lights, and that musty smell getting stronger and stronger but nothing scary. 

“BOO!” came a voice from behind a false wall, the voice belonging to a gory clown figure wielding a giant plastic knife, the kind filled with the runny fake blood. Reid and Hotch flinched but didn't jump, not the way the clown had wanted and he muttered something about a tough crowd, which made both men chuckle. Two more jump scares and then...then Reid remembered, that's when someone jumped out and knocked a baseball bat into Hotch's knee, sending him spiraling to the ground in agony. Reid hadn't seen it very clearly, it was so dark, but he heard the sickening crack and he knew. The second hit found its way to his head, knocking him out. Reid grabbed for his gun but was too late, the bat connected with his own head and he slumped down on top of his friend. 

That's when he woke, in the corn field, Hotch still unconscious beside him. He had crawled to the other man, felt for a pulse, ripped part of his shirt apart to stop the bleeding on the back of his head and pulled him close – he couldn't think of anything else to do yet. His own head was throbbing but he couldn't feel any blood, they hadn't hit him as hard. He searched his memory for the sounds, the smells, the faces but everyone wore masks and that strange musty smell was still clouding his senses. Something vibrated in Reid's pocket and he reached in, pulling out a phone that didn't belong to him. It looked like a burner. 

“Hello?” Reid asked, holding the phone near his ear with one hand, the other steady against Hotch's head wound. 

“He's coming to find you...” the voice on the other end of the line said quietly, almost whispering. “You're gonna die...”

“Who is this? Who are you? An assault on a Federal Agent is a felony and you've just done it twice,” Reid said, trying to keep his voice steady. He knew the caller wouldn't care but he needed to try and keep them on the line. 

“He doesn't care about any of that...” the voice said, cackling into the phone. “You're gonna die...but not before your friend...he'll let you watch your friend die first...lucky you!” 

Silence. The caller was gone. Reid tucked the phone into his pocket, though he wanted to throw it as far away from himself as possible. He fumbled through his own pockets, looking for his phone, his gun, and came up empty. No weapons, no help, and even if he was awake, no Hotch. He had to do this on his own. 

“Reid?” came a soft voice from below, and Reid looked down to see Hotch's dark eyes blinking up at him. 

“Hotch, we're in trouble...” his voice trembled a little and he forced himself to clear his throat, to temper his fear. 

“Where are we?” Hotch asked, trying to sit up. He felt nauseous and dizzy, and moving sent him into a convulsion of pain radiating from his leg. He looked down at his leg curiously, he couldn't remeember hurting himself...he couldn't remember why he was lying in this mud. “My leg...”

“You're hurt, and someone is after us. We have to get out of this field. I can help you walk if you need me to but we have to go. _Now._ ” 

Hotch nodded and tried to get to his feet, rolling off of his friend's lap first, but he bumped his kneecap against the ground and it sent him sprawling into the mud, crying out in agony. Reid bit into his lip to keep from making a noise and silently reached over to wrap his arms around his friend and pull him to his feet. Hotch sucked in his breath and pushed back against the pain, leaning almost his entire weight against the younger man now. 

“Reid, I can't walk,” he said mournfully, unable to put any weight on his leg without collapsing in pain again. “You have to leave me here. If we're in danger, you have to leave me, you need to get out...”

“No,” Reid replied, his voice quiet and clipped. 

“Reid, that's an order,” Hotch shot back, blinking away hot tears from his eyes as he tried to focus on something other than the incredible pain in his leg. Reid just shook his head. 

“I'm sorry Hotch, I can't obey that order, I won't leave you behind. I'll carry you if I have to.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for coming along with me on this journey! I love Halloween dearly, and Matthew Gray Gubler's adoration for the holiday just inspires me to give him the best stories I can for the occasion. So often, Spence is the victim, but I think that for Halloween, maybe he can be the hero. :) If you have anything you'd like to see, shout it out and I'll try to get it in here! As Tim Curry once sang, anything can happen on Halloween...

The mud was slippery under their feet as they propelled themselves down the corridors of corn stalks, turning corner after corner with no end in sight. Hotch realized, at that moment, that he had never been inside of a corn maze before and he probably never would again – this wouldn't have been fun even if he wasn't suffering from a knee injury and there wasn't a maniac out for their blood. Every so often they paused to listen for footsteps, breathing, anything but only found the sound of their own hearts thumping, blood pumping angrily in their veins. Reid was exhausted, at times he was dragging Hotch's entire weight, others he got a little help but at no time was he ever off the hook entirely. The smells of the night surrounded them – decaying corn and leaves and mud and every so often, the breeze brought the distant smells from the harvest festival, kettle corn and corn dogs and farm animals. Reid desperately wanted to call out to all of those people but he couldn't, they had to stay quiet, it was part of the game they'd reluctantly ended up playing. 

“Reid, you need...you need to leave me...” Hotch hissed, feeling his legs once more give out beneath him. His body slumped downward and for the first time Reid had to let him go, he couldn't catch him again, his arms were shaking and his own knees felt weak. He'd tried but he just couldn't. They had to take a break. Hotch fell to the mud and kept himself from crying out in pain but Reid could see the man's anguish written all over his features. He had to get Hotch out of here. He could see that his makeshift t-shirt bandage was soaked through with blood from the back of Hotch's head and he desperately needed medical attention. 

“Stop saying that,” Reid snapped in a sharp whisper, frantically looking around at the various openings among the corn, trying to deduce where they'd been and where they needed to go. Were they heading inward or out? _Focus, Spencer, focus_ he told himself, glancing up at the night sky through the sweat that was dripping into his eyelashes now. He reached up and slicked his hair back, tucking it behind his ears and wiped furiously at his eyes to focus. He'd solved hundreds of mind bending cases full of twists and turns, surely he could solve his way out of a labyrinth of corn made by some well meaning farmers. The phone buzzed again in his pocket, breaking his train of thought. He pulled it out and held it away from him for a moment, looking down at Hotch who was lost in a world of his own pain right now and not paying attention to anything Reid did. 

“Hello?” Reid asked, willing his voice to sound solid and strong. Hotch looked up at him, shocked to hear his voice ring out so crisp and cool in the night. 

“He can smell you...can you smell him?” Click. The line went dead again, and Spencer put the phone back into his pocket and made eye contact with Hotch. 

“They said 'he can smell you, can you smell him'....” he whispered, crouching down on his haunches to be closer to Hotch. He watched as Hotch's body tensed up, realization flashing over his face. 

“Listen...” Hotch mumbled, pointing a trembling hand toward the cornstalks just behind them. “Can you hear it?”

“Its sounds like...” Reid started, but before he could finish his sentence he saw glowing eyes down at the far end of the corridor they were heading down. Bared white teeth, glowing in the moonlight. “A dog?” But it wasn't just a dog and they both knew it. This dog looked like a monster, it was as big as a man and looked rabid, like the stuff of Halloween legends. Reid blinked the disbelief from his eyes and scrambled to grab Hotch and get them to their feet, his arms wrapped tight around the older man's waist. He could hear Hotch protesting again but he ignored it and ran as fast as his legs could carry them both, turning corner after corner, some he knew they'd already gone through and some new. Where were the footprints? They'd just been here, he knew it, but their footprints were disappearing into the mud as fast as they made them. He glanced behind him every few moments, sometimes the dog was gaining on them, sometimes it seemed to disappear, and he couldn't make heads or tails of it but he just ran. His legs felt numb and he was running on nothing but pure adrenaline now, dragging his boss like he weighed nothing when a few minutes before he was the weight of the entire world. He turned another corner and ran smack into what looked like a man, but didn't feel like a man – it was solid, like wood, but dressed like a man and his terrified concussed vision told him it was probably a scarecrow but why was it in his way? He'd slammed so hard into it that Hotch had fallen to the ground beside it in a heap, motionless at first in his pain and exhaustion. He tried to scramble up to his feet, stubborn as a mule, grabbing at the strange scarecrow's patchwork clothing for leverage. Reid ignored his boss for a moment, studying this strange scarecrow with furrowed brow – why was it here? What purpose could it serve down in the maze instead of flying high above it? 

They both smelled it then, that musty smell from the haunted house. Looking at each other, then at the scarecrow, they realized it was more than musty – it was the smell of death and decay, a decomposed body. It was a smell they were both familiar with, and now Reid knew why he'd been so bothered by it in the house – there were more of these...these corpse actors in the house. His mind lit on all of the statuettes of horror that never moved to jump out at them as they turned corner after corner inside that makeshift house and it felt like ice water was trickling down his spine. Hotch was coming to the same realization about what was before him, that his fingers weren't clawing their way into a piece of wood or a bale of straw to keep himself upright, he could feel the slight give of flesh under the clothing but a stiffness that came from something no longer alive. 

“Hotch...” Reid muttered, grabbing his friend and pulling him back from the scarecrow now. He held firm to his friend's waist with one hand and reached up, tugging at the shredded burlap sack covering the scarecrow's face to reveal a man's decomposing features, painted vulgarly to appear almost alive but definitely entirely dead, rotting flesh falling from it's stiff features. Both men peered at it in shock for a moment longer than they'd wanted to before they heard a sound, a rustling of brittle corn husks somewhere behind them in the darkness.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! I have no excuse, just an apology. <3 I expect probably one more chapter after this will wrap it up, but we'll see! I'm not a great planner. LOL

Without warning, Reid began dragging Hotch past the corpse, not hazarding another glance behind him, just running. He wanted to know what was behind them, but he didn't need to know, he needed to find a way out. Around and around they ran, he knew they were going in circles and he could feel the cold night air collapsing in all around them but he pushed away the panic, banished it to the pit of his stomach and it could rot there for all he cared. Hotch had saved him enough times over the years, he'd be damned if he couldn't prove that he was just as capable of it when the tables were turned. The temperature had dropped significantly since they'd been running, and while he was working up a sweat, he could feel Hotch shivering in his arms every time they stopped. He had lost a lot of blood from his head wound and was clearly in shock but he was hanging on and Reid felt like that was as merciful as he was going to get for the time being. Their footsteps were squishing into the wet mud, falling deeper and deeper like they'd entered a pit of quicksand, or maybe he was just getting so tired that it was that much harder to lift his feet with every step. 

“Reid,” Hotch gasped with his last spurt of energy before going limp in the younger man's arms. Spencer tried to keep up his momentum, tried to hold on to the other man, but Hotch was too heavy and he dropped his friend to the ground, collapsing beside him. He could hear Hotch groan beside him and the sounds of his friend in pain twisted his stomach in knots. He pulled Hotch in close to him, hugging his arms around his friend and setting himself firmly where he sat – no more running, they couldn't. Whatever this was, he was going to have to face it head on. Spencer Reid was no stranger to staring the boogeyman in the eye. Minutes passed into eternity and everything was silent, no animal sounds, no human sounds, just silence. The full moon above them shone bright now and he wondered how long they'd been there, if anyone was looking for them. Hotch shifted in his arms and peered up at Reid with glassy, red rimmed eyes. 

“Please just go,” he pleaded, not wanting his friend to be in danger just because he wasn't able to go any further. Spencer smiled sadly, sweetly, and shook his head. 

“I won't do that. We're going to sit here and wait for them. I'm done playing their game.” During his quiet time, Spencer had reflected on the situation, all of the sights and smells and the phone calls and the corpses – these people, this person, whoever it was – they thrived on the scare. They needed their victims to be scared. Spencer wasn't scared of these boogeymen anymore, he was only worried about Hotch, and making the other man run was worse for him than just lying still. Hotch groaned and nodded, he'd stop pleading, Spencer had made up his mind. 

“What's your plan?” Hotch asked, his voice hoarse and dry. He licked his lips and tried to force himself up out of Spencer's lap, into a sitting position. At first, Spencer resisted this, but he knew Hotch wouldn't be any better off right now feeling weak, so he helped him upright and scooted him until his back rested against the thick wall of cornstalks. 

“First, I think we need to have a look at your leg,” Spencer muttered. He didn't really think that was the first thing that needed doing, but it would distract Hotch from trying to over exert himself coming up with a plan – the man was clearly suffering from a concussion and blood loss, and Spencer's plan didn't really involve Hotch doing anything other than sitting, so the longer he could avoid saying that out loud, the better off they both would be. Hotch nodded, bracing himself as Spencer began sliding the leg of his pants up. Halfway up the shin, Spencer already saw the deep bruises forming, and after another moment his knee was exposed – grim, ugly bruises and swollen to twice its size, blood dried now from a wound right on his knee cap. The sight of it almost made Spencer gag. Hotch just stared blankly down at it, through it. It was gruesome, but fascinating, and his eyes got lost following all of the colors ebbing and flowing into each other, deep purples and bright blues, a grisly painting of pain. 

“Hotch...” Spencer whispered, his voice almost cracking. “I'm sorry for making you run. If I'd stopped to think instead of letting my adrenaline take over, I never...” 

“Stop it,” Hotch demanded, his steely gaze now hyper focused on Spencer. He squared up his shoulders and tried to put on as much of his boss demeanor as he could muster. “You did what you were trained to do. You got us out of two bad situations, and now you've come up with a way to help us through another one, right?” 

“Yeah, but...”

“No. I'm okay. _I'm okay because of you._ ” 

Before Spencer could reply, he heard footsteps squelching through the mud not far away. A few rows, maybe, and his adrenaline surged again – he felt like scrapping his plan and picking Hotch up to run again, but he pushed that panic back to where it belongs and took a deep breath. He held his finger to his mouth, the universal sign for hush, and nodded to his left, indicating the direction he heard the noises coming from. Hotch peered in that direction, attempting to focus his tired eyes in the dark. He didn't know what Reid's plan was, but he knew without asking that his part in the plan was to sit this one out, and it killed him to do that but he had to trust Reid. If it went bad, he'd have saved up some strength to help in any case. A dark figure appeared at the end of the row the two men were seated in now, and Hotch saw a large knife shining in the moonlight – he knew they had no weapons, no phones, nothing to defend themselves with except Spencer's big beautiful brain. He watched as Reid rose to standing, and then took a step forward. Two steps. He was advancing on the man with the knife – somehow his lithe frame, lit by the Halloween moon, looked almost imposing and scary. Hotch sat in awe of what he was seeing, unsure of whether it was a concussed illusion or the real deal, but he was amazed nonetheless. 

“You're not scary,” Reid called, still advancing on the man with the knife. “Your haunted house _sucks_. I let you trick me into thinking you were scary because it's Halloween, but I'm done playing this game. It's boring.” He paused, squaring up his shoulders and standing as tall as he could. The man with the knife moved forward now, his build was like Spencer's but more substantial, or maybe he just had on more clothes. He was obscured from head to toe, he looked just like one of the corpse actors, covered in layers of clothing to hide the stench of death. 

“You won't be bored when I'm chopping your friend to bits,” the man with the knife growled, still advancing on Reid. For a split second, Reid felt a pang of regret for his decision to stand his ground, thought about whether or not they still had time to run, but let that pass with a solid, deep breath. He'd made his choice. Right or wrong, they'd have to follow through. 

“You'll have to go through me first.” Reid noted that his proximity to the man was now closer than he'd wanted, which meant the man was also much too close to Hotch for his liking so he took a few pointed steps backward, standing directly in the other man's patch to Hotch, never shrinking. “You don't get to prey on the weak without going through the strong first. Pack rules.”

Hotch watched this interaction, riveted by what he was seeing, though a little offended at being called "the weak", but he'd save that for later. His ego was bruised, but he'd survive. 

Soon, the man with the knife was laughing. It was a low, slow laugh, unnatural and wrong sounding. Reid regarded the man with puzzlement for a moment, cocking his head to the side to really take in the sight. As he stood, entranced by the man before him, he heard sounds coming from behind him – muffled groans and rustling leaves, and he turned in time to see something large and shadowy wrap its arms around Hotch, one hand clamped tight over his mouth, and drag him through the cornstalk wall and out of sight. Reid turned his back to the man with the knife and burst through the new break in the cornstalks himself, chasing after the shadow man who had thrown Hotch over his shoulder and was hauling him down the lane like a sack of potatoes – the shadowy man was huge, absolutely monstrous, and Reid had to admit that this caught him by surprise. He knew they would have more up their sleeves but this one came out of left field. Who could predict a behemoth? Someone on the team would have, surely, but not him. He chased after the two of them quietly, sticking close to the shadows, fighting the urge to call to his friend, but he knew he'd get further if he followed quietly. Every so often he peered behind him, looking for the man with the knife, but he knew that he wasn't following – this was part of the game, and even if Spencer had surprised him by making a stand, it wasn't enough to win the battle yet.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed this journey! I love Spence fics, but you just don't get to see enough of him being the hero so I hope I did that idea some justice.

A barn loomed in the distance, decrepit and weather worn, it's doors hanging wide open on rusted hinges. Spencer stopped just inside of the edge of the corn, watching as the huge hulk of a man carried Hotch's limp body across the muddy lot and through the door, letting it hang open behind him. He looked around, taking in the brightness of the full moon against the backdrop of stars, glad to see that the heavens still hung above him as they always had. There was comfort in that. He thought of his mother, her knowing smile, her wise eyes and he fought back a small sob as the emotions of the night began to try and claw their way to the surface. He swallowed them down hard, it could wait, just a little longer. They were in the open, he wasn't dead yet, and he hoped the same of Hotch. Eyes darting to and fro, he looked for some kind of cover that he could take as he made way to the barn but found very little, a tractor sat about halfway but he'd be exposed on the way to the tractor, and from there to the door. Still, he had no choice, he'd have to chance it. The longer Hotch was in there alone with that man, the less hope either of them had. 

Taking a deep breath and steeling his resolve, Spencer darted out from the shadows and made for the tractor, feeling his feet threaten to slip and slide in the mud but holding them steady step after step. He reached the shadow of the large machine easily, dipping into the shadow it cast in the too bright moonlight and sliding underneath it. He crouched there in the mud, his feet sinking almost to his ankles in it, and watched the shadow figures moving in the open doorway now – there were three moving and so many that weren't. One was the huge man, he could tell, and another was likely the man they'd encountered with the knife – the third was Hotch, on his knees, chained up by his wrists, and the thought of it nearly made Spencer lose the entire contents of his stomach there in the muck. His friend, the state he was in, and these monsters just playing their sick games with him. In the dark, he began feeling around on the underbelly of the tractor, trying to find anything he could dislodge and use as a weapon but came up empty. He slipped back out behind it, searching in the dark for anything he could use, even a stick lodged in a wheel would have done.

Jackpot! He found a small toolbox sitting on the back and quietly peered inside at the contents – a screwdriver, a wrench and some various bits and bobbles he couldn't use. He reached in and pulled the screwdriver out silently, and to his surprise, it revealed a small wooden handled hammer in the bottom. His heart skipped a beat. He slid the screwdriver and wrench into his pockets as best he could, shoved the nuts and bolts into his socks, just in case, and gripped the hammer with his life. His knuckles turned white with his grip – this was it. Sucking in one last deep breath of the perfect autumn air, he began sliding along toward the barn now, trying to keep to the darkest places he could until he finally reached the door. 

He paused and peered in through the broken slats, his stomach wrenching again at the sight of Hotch there, chained up. He could see that Hotch was awake, but he was somewhere else, hidden deep in his mind now, Spencer could see it in his eyes. The two men were busying themselves on the other side, which gave Spencer a little comfort, they weren't actively hurting his friend while he slipped around in the shadows catching his breath. His eyes darted from one man to another, then began taking in all of the various items around the barn – it was not so much a barn as a chamber of horrors. There were devices used for the slaughter of animals everywhere, but Spencer knew that's not what these men were using them for. He could see more of their corpse scarecrows hanging from chains along the walls, lying in wait. 

“We can hear you, pretty boy,” came a voice from inside the barn and Spencer shivered. He froze for a minute, unable to will his legs to move under him. “Come on in, we've been waiting.”

Slowly, Spencer moved into the doorway, his resolve threatening to melt over and over but somehow he kept it up. He squared his shoulders and straightened his back, it was all an act but he hoped that Hotch would see him walk in tall and feel safe – if he could only do that, he would consider whatever happened next a success. He refused to look over at his friend, though, instead staring directly at the two men before him. 

“Now we can party, Jimbo,” the smaller man, the man with the knife, said to his larger friend who smiled and there was nothing pleasant about that smile. He was filthy, he looked almost like a bloated corpse fished out of a pond. His skin had a greenish tint to it in the dim light of the barn, like he was growing algae himself. 

“Sure can,” Jimbo replied, licking his fat purple lips and producing a large fire poker that looked straight out of a medieval torture chamber. Without another second of hesitation, Spencer ducked and slipped his long fingers inside his sock and tossed the nuts and bolts into the air at the two men, causing instant confusion. He lunged at the smaller man first, hammer raised above his head and ready to come down on the other man's when he heard a loud BANG! Followed by another, and he watched in abject terror and shock as both men fell limp to the ground before him. He looked down at them, their bodies oozing blood over the hay, scattered among bits of nuts and bolts, his ears ringing and his eyes not believing what they were seeing. He turned on his heel just in time to see the most beautiful sight his eyes had ever beheld, like angels in the night, his team was entering the barn now. Without waiting to talk to them, he rushed over to Hotch, wrapping his arms around the older man's midsection and hefting him up to his feet, holding him close while Morgan got the chains off of his wrists. In one swift motion, his arms fell around Spencer's neck, and tightened just enough to tell Spencer that he was still there, they'd made it. He held Hotch tight, like his life depended on it, until the ambulance arrived. Everything was a blur around him, the shock and exhaustion finally tearing through his system, but as long as he held onto Hotch, he could keep himself from bursting at the seams. He'd gotten through everything that night on the premise of just saving Hotch, and that would have to carry him just a little further. Hotch's head rested against Spencer's shoulder, his arms now wrapped around the other man's torso, and he knew how vulnerable he was right now, but if he just held onto Spencer he could lose the rest of it in the blur of his pounding head and the lights and chaos of the police and his team. He couldn't just be fine right now and he knew it, but Spencer was holding him so tight that nothing could penetrate this fortress for the time being and it was enough. 

…..............................

The hospital room smelled sterile, filled with chemicals and plastic and beeping machines and Aaron Hotchner sleeping soundly in his bed. Dave Rossi sat beside him, his chair pulled close to the bed, his eyes unable to do anything but watch his partner as he slept. It had been two days in the hospital, and it would be many, many more before they were out but he just kept hoping they'd get out of the ICU sooner rather than later so he could get a more comfortable spot to sleep in. The team had filed through, one by one, visiting during the hours they could but the ICU rules were pretty strict so it was primarily Rossi here, day after day, keeping watch over Aaron. 

“Dave?” came a small voice from the door, and he looked up to see Spencer for the first time since the night in the barn. Without warning, tears stung hot in Dave's eyes and he leapt to his feet, advancing on the younger man and wrapping him in the tightest hug he could muster. Spencer froze for a moment, but warmed up and hugged his friend back, letting him just stay there as long as he needed. 

“How is he?”

“Alive,” Dave muttered, pulling himself together and looking up at the younger, taller man with a teary twinkle in his eyes. “Thanks entirely to you.” 

Spencer blushed, shoving his hands into his pockets, sheepishly. “I didn't really do anything,” Spencer said, eyes trained on the speckles on the floor now. Rossi let out a chuckle and shook his head. 

“Funny,” he mumbled, gesturing for Spencer to take his seat next to Hotch's bed. “That's not how he recalls it at all.” 

“He has a head injury,” Spencer offered, a hint of sarcasm dripping from his voice. Rossi let out a soft laugh this time, walking over to rest his hand on Spencer's shoulder and squeezing gently. 

“Rude,” came a soft voice from the bed, and both men looked over to see Hotch's eyes blinking open, his eyes struggling to focus in the dim light of the room. 

“Hotch,” Spencer said quietly, leaning forward just a little. “I'm so sorry - “ he began, but Hotch shot him a look that said he'd best stop talking right there. The room stifled with an air of discomfort. 

“You,” he started, taking a painful breath and steadying his gaze on the younger man. Through the bandages and beeping machines and pain medicine, Spencer could see a flicker of his boss sparking to life in those dark eyes. “You saved my life. You defied my orders repeatedly, you put yourself in considerable danger on my behalf, and I _should_ formally reprimand you...but I'm just going to leave it at _thank you_. If you try to apologize again, I might change my mind.” 

Spencer, a bit taken aback, just nodded in reply and folded his hands in his lap. Rossi stifled a smile, his eyes twinkling as he looked down at the man who was the love of his life, certainly not well but absolutely alive because of the heroics of Spencer Reid on Halloween.


End file.
